they were happening onthe surface of the materialsinvolved. You would developa new catalyst, use it for anhour, fnd it was ruined, andhave to go back to the draw-ing board. We were guessingat what was happening to theactive surfaces over time.”“Now we can use a suite ofinstruments, including var-ious high resolution micro-scopes and spectroscop-ic mapping tools to look atdynamic changes on thenanoscale, to see what’s hap-pened (or even what is hap-pening in real time), and thendevelop more stable chemi-cal structures for batteriesand catalysts, which in theirdesign incorporate strategiesto deal with and exploit theirchanging nature.”He believes that the new AINST facili-ties at the state-of-the-art Sydney Nano-science Hub, which opened in April 2016will double or triple the effectiveness ofhis team. “We have a fantastic team ofresearchers who’ve published a truckloadof high-impact papers over the years. Buthow do you harness all that intellect tocreate real batteries, catalysts and jobs?This is how… this Institute brings togeth-er the engineering, science, instrumenta-tion, facilities, people and connections toindustry needed to put our researchers

Batteries beyond Lithium

Lithium batteries have transformedpower storage — from smartphones toelectric cars and submarines. But likeevery battery their chemical compo-sition changes through every chargecycle. Lithium ions sitting in layers of graphite move betweenelectrodes and change the oxidation state of, e.g. magne-sium oxide. The chemical rearrangements cause the graphiteand oxide layers to physical-ly expand and contract by upto 15 percent at every cycle,cracking and detaching fromthe electrodes.

Maschmeyer has eliminated the stack of cards. Instead,
his design has a wobbly carbon
electrode, with a gel touching
it. The design is self-healing.

He has used this idea to
create zinc-bromine batteries that transport ions embedded in a gel. These batteries
are stable and fexible and use

Sydney Nanoscience Hub. Credit:
University of Sydney.

Professor Thomas
Maschmeyer, Director of
the Australian Institute
for Nanoscale Science
and Technology (AINST)
and experimental
chemist. Credit:
University of Sydney.